


All There Is

by winged



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Future Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winged/pseuds/winged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not something she thinks about, until she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All There Is

**Author's Note:**

> This is not-quite-a-fic, but it happened, anyway.

It’s not something she thinks about. Mostly what Blue thinks about are the things that everyone thinks about: what she has to do at work tomorrow, what her friends are screwing up this week (or getting unexpectedly, marvelously right), what to eat. Who she’d like to see, chores.

She usually doesn't even think about it when she's with Gansey. Those moments are all in present tense. They’re turned up with unvoiced wishes, weight to every movement every so often interrupted by an ease, a lowering of defenses that feels odd for how rare it is.

 

But things don’t require thinking about to be.

In between spoonfuls of yogurt, while she feeds the cats, in the hiss of a hot panini maker.

_Gansey’s going to die._

A needle pricks a finger, a laugh erupts from lungs, blasting music gets turned off abruptly.

_You’re going to kill him._

 

Maybe it’s terrible, but she’s stopped remembering it’s there, most days. The way Gansey flops himself down in the grass without a thought (or with practiced denial) for possible vectors of death.  Blue doesn’t think about being another one while she’s busy taking orders, sewing, laughing, not being able to go to the Amazon, putting her feet up on the dash of the Pig.

She doesn’t think about it, except when she does.

 

Blue’s texting him when it hits. It’s a stupid conversation, like every three AM conversation anyone has ever had: she’s sitting in the window of her bedroom, leaning out a little to catch snowflakes on her tongue. In the last day it’s gone from 70 degrees to 30s and cloudy. Gansey let her borrow his crew sweater on the way home. It’s a little itchy and worn in in places and it smells like him. It’s ridiculously oversized on her and the Aglionby yellow doesn’t match anything she’s wearing. Blue has her knees pulled up to her chin and, with it wrapped around her, only her head and toes and ankles are fully uncovered.

On the phone they’re casually arguing the merits of various political systems. And there it is, without any more announcement than the snowflakes melting on her tongue: someday she’s going to wake up and there won’t be this. Someday, it’ll be _normal_ that she can’t wrap herself up in coiled telephone cord listening to Gansey’s voice on the other end or text him and hear her phone buzz back.

Her chest feels scraped-out, emptied with it. Blue’s been mourning this boy before she ever met him. She knew better. She _knew_ better.

 

She can’t say that, though. She can’t form words. The phone buzzes with a really bad pun that requires some social history background, and when she doesn’t immediately reply it’s followed up by a little self conscious bespectacled nerdy emoji, and the pair feels like they were aimed specifically at her soft spots.

Blue just texts back ❤ , and that shouldn’t mean anything, it’s a handful of 0s and 1s, but her stomach turns over anyway before she hits send. As though that heart can be distinguished from the <333s she sends Noah. As though they don’t both know, anyway.

 

There’s a long, long silence, and she tips her head back to look at the snow falling. It’s not sticking, but it doesn't know that.

 

 _Do you want to go somewhere?_   Gansey texts back instead of any real answer.

 _it’s 3 am,_ she says, because some part of Blue is still scrabbling desperately at sense, and because it’s easier to make it seem over text that it’s not a very small part. That her heart doesn’t traitorously drill _yes yes anywhere_ against her ribs.

 

_I know._

_Do you want to anyway?_

 

He’s going to die. Soon.

And then --

But there’s no and-then. That’s the way it ends, the same way it started. That’s all there is.

Blue could pull back from this now, could at any time. They could -- should -- make this easier for each other. Pretend they don’t care, some sort of gentleman’s agreement that this isn’t possible and therefore isn’t to be touched. Move on and stop prodding at it.  

Except it’s already happening, has already happened, and anyway she doesn’t want to.

 

_yes._


End file.
